A guide for farms and CSAs
CSA farm box weekly pickup on Shopify
A CSA is a promise: a box every week, packed the morning it goes out, waiting at the farm stand or the market on the same day. This guide covers a CSA farm box with weekly pickup on Shopify: how to set up pickup sites and a share with plain Shopify, where that runs out, and how Still Works Standing Orders handles the weekly part.
1. Decide the shape of your share
| Decision | What it means for a farm | A typical answer |
|---|---|---|
| Pickup sites and days | Where members collect, and on which day at each site. | The farm stand on Wednesday, the Saturday market |
| Packing cutoff | When the count has to be final so you know how much to harvest. | Monday at 8 p.m. for Wednesday |
| Box sizes and limits | How many boxes of each size you can fill each pickup day. | Thirty small, twenty large |
| How members pay | Week by week, or a block of weeks up front. | Eight weeks at a time |
2. Set up pickup sites in plain Shopify
Each place members collect from needs to be a Shopify location. Add it under Settings > Locations with a full street address. Then go to Settings > Shipping and delivery > Local pickup, turn on local pickup for that location, pick an expected pickup time, and write instructions members will read in their emails: "Boxes are in the cooler by the barn door, 3 to 6 p.m."
Put the boxes in their own shipping profile under Settings > Shipping and delivery, with no shipping rates, so checkout only offers pickup. Then edit "Ready for local pickup" under Settings > Notifications so the message sounds like you.
If some members get delivery instead, set the delivery area under Settings > Shipping and delivery > Local delivery, by postal code or by distance from the farm.
3. Selling the share with plain Shopify
Without an app, the common way is to sell the whole season as one product paid up front.
- Under Products, create a product called "Summer share", with an option for box size and a second option for pickup site and day.
- Turn on Track quantity for each variant and set the number of shares you can fill. Untick "Continue selling when out of stock" so the share closes when it is full.
- Tag each member in Customers with their site, such as "csa-wednesday-stand", so you can filter the list by site.
- Each week, filter Customers by tag, or filter Orders by the share product and export, to build the packing list for each site.
What plain Shopify cannot do here: charge the member week by week or block by block, let a member skip a week when they are away, move a member to another pickup day, or move every box off a day you close. Each of those becomes an email to you and a note on a spreadsheet. A vacation week usually turns into a box nobody picks up.
4. The weekly box in Still Works Standing Orders
Still Works Standing Orders treats the pickup day as the thing being sold. Each member's box belongs to a pickup or delivery day, and each day has its own cutoff and its own limit. Setup is under Set up in the app.
- Locations. Add each pickup site and match it to its Shopify location from step 2. Add a delivery run too if you deliver. The app checks that local pickup is turned on and the address is complete.
- Week. For each site, tick its pickup days and set when orders close: one to seven days before, at a time you choose, for example two days before at 20:00.
- Plans. Add a plan at each site with your box sizes. Members choose every week, every two weeks, or every four weeks, from what you allow. Under Pay, choose each time, or 4, 8 or 12 at a time, up front. A paid block is charged once and collected one day at a time.
- Capacity. Type how many boxes of each size you can fill on each pickup day, per site. A day that is full shows as full on the product page, and a new member can leave an email to hear when a spot opens.
- Calendar. Close a date, or one site on a date, for weather or a holiday. Boxes on that day move to the next open day and each member is emailed once.
What members do on their own. From their account on your store, members skip the next box, skip until a date for a trip, pause, resume, change to another pickup day the plan offers, or swap to another box on the plan. On a block paid up front, a skipped paid day carries to the end of the block instead of being lost. A day before orders close, the app emails each member a reminder with a link to skip.
Packing day. Open Today and pick the site, or see all sites together. The top is the total of each box size to pack. Below is every member, what they get and where, ready to print or download as a CSV file. Mark boxes ready and Shopify sends the ready for pickup message. A forecast shows the next two weeks, so you can see the count before you plan the harvest.
The Free plan covers up to 10 active standing orders, one pickup location and one delivery run. More sites need the Studio plan, which allows up to 10 pickup locations and 10 delivery runs. Find the app on the Shopify App Store.
Related guides
- How to set a cutoff for local delivery on Shopify
- How to let customers skip a week of a subscription on Shopify
- All guides
Where to go from here
The Still Works Standing Orders page has the plain description of what the app does and does not do. If something here does not match what you see, email the studio and it gets fixed the same business day.